Gary appeared in the door, carrying a tray. Cardboard sandwich boxes, paper cups filled with soda, and a thermos. He seemed younger.
“Here we are,” he said as he set the lunch tray on the table. “Dig in. It’s on the house.”
The two cousins opened the boxes and started eating. For a while neither said a word. Then Gary asked, “Did you cut yourself?”
“Yeah. When I was cleaning up a campsite. On some broken beer bottles.”
“Damn teenagers.”
“But one of your employees helped me out. That young woman who was working with you behind the counter when I arrived.”
“Jennifer. That was nice of her.”
“Uh-huh. Not many girls would take the trouble to help an old man.”
“Nope. You’re right about that,” said Gary.
He seems the same as usual, thought Lance. Could he be mistaken? But then he remembered the sight of the two of them behind the counter. It’s hard to hide that sort of thing, he thought. It has something to do with the degree of trust between two bodies. It’s noticeable when two people are used to being in each other’s arms.
Under other circumstances he might have asked Gary about it, but not anymore. Lance had no right to an opinion about the morality of his cousin’s actions. It was Gary who ought to take Lance to task and explain that he couldn’t do what he was now doing. Protecting a murderer. Breaking into a cabin. Lying to the FBI.
“So how are you really doing?” asked Gary. He didn’t look at Lance as he asked the question.
“Great.”
“Sure?” Gary still didn’t look at him.
“Yeah,” said Lance, starting to get annoyed. “Why shouldn’t I be great?”
Gary pretended to take a sip of his coffee. Lance had seen this ploy before. Whenever his cousin was feeling uncertain, he would always do something to divert attention. He would cough, for example. Or he’d suddenly have to blow his nose, as if he had a cold. Right now he raised the mug to his lips and pretended to drink.
“I don’t know, but I was just thinking that . . . you found that dead Norwegian . . . ,” he said as he slowly set the mug back down on the table. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.”
“No, of course not,” said Lance.
“So everything’s okay, then?”
“Sure.”
Lance realized that this was Gary’s way of offering support. But he couldn’t tell his cousin about what had happened. The moment he opened his mouth to say that Andy had killed the Norwegian, it would all be over. The world that he knew would be destroyed. Not just for him, but for everybody who was part of it. Andy, of course. But also Tammy and Chrissy. And for Lance’s own son, Jimmy. But it would be worst of all for Inga. Her son a murderer! She had undoubtedly long ago suppressed what happened to Clayton Miller. Did we ever talk about that? wondered Lance. Did we ask why? No. Of course it was a shock that Andy had almost killed a boy, but the thought of finding out why was even worse.
Lance sipped his coffee and took a bite of the chicken sandwich. “I’m doing great,” he repeated. “Working a little too hard, maybe, but who isn’t?”
“Don’t get me started,” said Gary, making a show of looking at all the people surrounding them. “But I can’t really complain. A man’s got to be happy as long as he has plenty to do. And he has his health. How’s Inga doing, by the way?”
“Really good.”
“Do you visit her often?”
“You know I do. I’ve actually been thinking of taking her out for a drive sometime soon.”
The truth was that the idea hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment. It was just a passing thought. But now it seemed like exactly the right thing to do. He missed his mother.
23
THE PHONE WAS RINGING ON THE TABLE NEXT TO HIM. Groggy and only half-awake, he finally managed to pick it up. Peering at the display, he recognized the home phone number of Sheriff Eggum.
He cleared his throat. “Hello?” he said.
“Lance?” said Eggum on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Bill. Um, what time is it?”
“Ten to seven. In the evening. Did I wake you up? Your voice sounds a little . . . ”
“Yeah, I must have dozed off.”
The sheriff laughed. “Soon I’ll be able to do the same thing. After I retire. Then I can sleep as much as I want. But you’re just a youngster.”
Lance was still so tired he was having trouble thinking of a response.
“You know what?” the sheriff went on. “I’m calling to tell you that the FBI has issued an arrest warrant in the murder case.”
Suddenly Lance was sitting bolt upright on the sofa. “Arrest warrant?” he said. “Who did they arrest?”
“A man from Grand Portage. An Ojibwe. It turned out that an Ojibwe did it.”
“When did this happen?”
“Today. This morning.”
“Why did they arrest him?”
“Because they think he’s the killer, of course.”
“But as far as I know, there was no concrete evidence.” Lance noticed that his voice was shaking.
“Oh, but there was. At the crime scene. Biological traces.”
“Fingerprints?”
“DNA.”
“Are you saying that they found this man’s DNA at the crime scene?”
“Yes . . . or no, not exactly. It turned out to be impossible to get a complete DNA profile from the material they had. It was just a matter of a few microscopic drops of blood. But what they did find out was that the blood had to come from an Indian. Or rather, a man with a certain amount of Indian genes. Not necessarily a full-blood, in other words. Apparently it’s a question of a mutation in a gene, or something like that. Something that only Indians have. So that led them straight to Grand Portage.”
“But good Lord, there are Indians living everywhere in Minnesota,” exclaimed Lance. “All over the country, for that matter. Why exactly Grand Portage?”
“Because early in the investigation they got a tip about a man who lives in Grand Portage. An anonymous tip. They even interviewed this individual, but decided that he didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“But now they’ve arrested this same man?”
“Yes. They managed to tear apart his alibi.”
“But what’s the motive?”
“Well, that’s not clear yet, but apparently he’s a drug addict, so I’m guessing that he must have snapped while he was on some sort of drug. But isn’t it great that they’ve finally caught him?”
“Sure. Of course.”
Lance still couldn’t figure out how this had come about, but if the biological evidence proved that an Indian had killed Georg Lofthus, he didn’t need to worry anymore about what Andy was doing that night. He could forget about the whole thing. Andy wasn’t a murderer after all. Lance almost felt like crying.
“Are you still there?” asked Eggum.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just incredibly relieved.”
“So this has really been hard on you, huh?” said the sheriff.
“Much harder than I thought.” Lance could hear that he didn’t have full control over his voice.
“I can understand that. It was . . . what should I say? It was very unfortunate that you should have to stumble over . . . well, you know what I mean. Regardless, now we can all breathe easy and tell the women and children that the killer is under lock and key,” said Eggum.
“Do you know what his name is?”
“Hmm . . . what did they tell me it was? I wrote it down, didn’t I? But where? Oh . . . wait a minute . . .”
Lance heard Eggum put down the phone and walk around the room, muttering to himself. A moment later he was back on the line.
“Now let’s see . . . ,” said Eggum. “His name is Lenny Diver. Does that ring a bell?”
Lance paused to think for a few seconds.
“No,” he said. “I’ve never heard that name before. But tell me one thing. Has he confessed?”
“Not yet, but they found a possible murder weapon in his possession.”
“What sort of weapon?”
“A baseball bat. I think it was in his car. He claimed someone planted it there.”
“Who would do something like that? The police?”
“Or the murderer.”
“Do you think he’s guilty?” asked Lance.
“A drug addict with a baseball bat seems to fit the bill for such a random and stupid act of violence—just like I’ve always thought it would turn out to be,” said the sheriff. “The Norwegian was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That must be what happened. A totally meaningless act. So, yeah, I think he’s guilty.”
AFTER TALKING TO BILL EGGUM, Lance went straight to the kitchen to get a Mesabi Red out of the fridge. He leaned against the counter and drank the whole bottle in four or five gulps.
Could it really be that simple? Just one phone call and the whole thing was over? If the biological evidence indicated that Georg Lofthus was killed by an Indian, then Andy couldn’t possibly have done it. Plain and simple. Lance knew that no matter what, his brother had secrets that shouldn’t, for all the world, get out, but he no longer believed that Andy had killed anyone.
Suddenly he remembered what it felt like to put on his running shoes in the hallway and go out running on the first springlike day of the year. Duluth, sometime back in the 1970s. A clear sidewalk after a long winter with lots of snow. The lake glittering in the sunlight. His legs feeling light, his feet practically flying over the cement. He had a similar feeling right now. An urge to run out of the house. Jump and kick like a ten-year-old. I can live with all the other questions, he thought. I can live with my own failure. The fact that I’m not a good policeman. Plenty of people live with much worse things. The only thing that Lance hadn’t known if he could live with was the thought that his brother was a murderer. And having to hide a killer’s identity. But now he’d been freed from that burden. Freed from having to find out whether he could have lived with that or not.
Then he happened to think about Inga. His mother was no longer in danger. Her world was not going to fall apart. She would leave this world without having been deeply hurt by one of her sons.
He went into the living room and called her at the nursing home in Duluth. When he heard how excited she was at the idea of going for a drive, he felt a pang of guilt at not suggesting it long ago.
“All the way to Grand Portage?” she exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Yep. All the way up there. Does that sound good, Mom?”
Nothing had sounded that good to Inga Hansen in a long time.
After talking with his mother, Lance got another beer from the kitchen, opened it, and took it along to his home office. The window was open. He pulled a chair over and sat down, propping his feet up on the windowsill. He drank his beer. He still felt an urge to go running, but it was probably safer for a man of his age to sit here, comfortably leaning back and enjoying a Mesabi Red. He breathed in the cool evening air, the fragrance of flowers and grass. He could also smell the heat that had settled in the walls of the house, which had baked in the sun all afternoon. And the water. Underlying everything else was the clear scent of freshwater. He recognized it at once. It was the smell of the lake. In the wintertime the smell was sharper, rawer, with a tinge of iron. But he realized now that he hadn’t noticed it in years.
24
EIRIK NYLAND was sitting on the flat rocks near Baraga’s Cross, on a cream-colored blanket he’d brought with him from the hotel. Next to him was a red ice chest he’d just bought. Inside were a Viking ship, a bottle of Gammel Opland, and four bottles of Mesabi Red.
It’s just so typical, he thought. When the breakthrough finally came, it turned out that the perpetrator was someone they’d already had contact with, but had decided was not of particular interest. Bjørn Hauglie had been of far greater interest the whole time. And the two men had actually been interviewed on the same day. While Bob Lecuyer and Nyland were in Duluth to talk to Hauglie for the first time, Jason Fries had gone up to Grand Portage to have a talk with a twenty-five-year-old named Lenny Diver. An anonymous man had called the police, claiming that it was Diver who had killed the Norwegian at Baraga’s Cross. Diver had twice been indicted for possession of meth. He’d also served time for drunk driving. He was what the Norwegian press loved to call “an individual known to the police.” Fries had called him a “typical small-time crook.” But he seemed to have a solid alibi. So they had put him on the back burner and focused on Hauglie instead.
Then, two days ago, the results finally arrived from the lab in Chicago where the crime scene evidence had been sent for analysis. After that, everything happened very fast. Among the material sent to the lab was a tiny sample of blood that couldn’t have belonged to the victim. Nor to Bjørn Hauglie, for that matter. Because it was determined that the blood had to have come from a man with Indian origins. A specific gene mutation was present that was found almost exclusively among Native Americans. It was true that the police did not have a DNA profile, nor was it possible to determine the percentage of Indian blood in the individual’s genetic makeup. So it was possible the person in question was not a full-blooded Indian. This discovery might not have brought them any closer to finding the killer, except that they’d already interviewed someone in Grand Portage as the result of the anonymous tip.
On that same day Lenny Diver was arrested at his home. This happened after Lecuyer and Nyland paid a visit to one of the two men who had provided Diver with an alibi. The police were unable to get hold of the other one. Diver had told Fries he’d been playing cards and drinking with these two buddies all night long when the murder was committed. And both men had confirmed his account. They said Lenny hadn’t been outside the house all night, so it would have been impossible for him to go out to Baraga’s Cross and bash in the skull of some tourist. But when Lecuyer and Nyland went to see Mist, as the second friend was called, and brought it to his attention that he was about to be drawn into a homicide case, he quickly admitted he hadn’t even seen Diver on the night in question. Nor had he been playing cards and drinking. Well, he did have a few drinks, but at home, and alone. Diver didn’t call Mist until the following day. If the police happened to contact him, Mist was supposed to say he and Diver had been drinking and playing cards together all night. “You know how they always come down on me whenever anything happens,” he’d told Mist. And Mist knew that was true. Lenny was the kind of guy who always ended up in the police spotlight, even if he’d done nothing wrong. And this time the only thing he’d done was to pick up some random chick and go back to her hotel room after some heavy drinking in a bar in Grand Marais. That was why he’d made up this story to tell his girlfriend—that he’d been in Grand Portage drinking and playing cards with two buddies all night long. Although the truth was that he’d been with another woman. But then he’d heard about the murder on the news. And he realized that if the cops came around, asking Lenny’s friends if they’d seen him during the relevant time frame, they’d hear a whole different story than the one he’d told his girlfriend. And then it was only a matter of time before she found out what he’d really been doing. And if that happened, Lenny Diver would have hell to pay.
That was how he’d presented his case.
Mist assured Nyland and Lecuyer that he would never lie to cover up a crime. But this was about a private matter. Good God, it had to do with a woman, after all. And men are always rooting for tail, right? If he’d known that Lenny had anything to do with the murder, he would never have . . .
But Nyberg and Lecuyer had heard enough. They’d found out what they wanted to know. Georg Lofthus was killed by an Indian, an
d Lenny Diver had lied about his alibi.
Diver tried to run when he saw who was knocking on his door, but he was overpowered by two officers from the tribal police. Nyland had remained in the background, observing the scene. Officially he had nothing to do with the arrest. His job was to assist with the investigation. And in his opinion, that was what he’d done, to the best of his ability. Even though it now appeared that his contributions had not led to anything of importance. But that was often what happened in his line of work. Suddenly a breakthrough would occur in a case, and it was often something they least expected. It was impossible to predict.
Regardless, the case was now over for Eirik Nyland. His part of the job was done, and he was leaving tomorrow for Norway. In two days he’d be out at the cabin with Vibeke and the girls. He’d talked to them on the phone, and they were still there. “We’re waiting for you,” Vibeke had said.
Now he was sitting here at Baraga’s Cross, waiting for Lance Hansen. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening, on Thursday, July 10, fifteen days after Hansen discovered the body. At first Nyland had planned to sit down next to the cross, but he changed his mind. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because of the withered flowers and burned-out candles he saw at the foot of the cross. At any rate, he’d decided to settle himself on rocks, about sixty feet away from the towering gray stone monument.
What a way to die, he thought. Struck down by a baseball bat in the woods near Lake Superior. A young man from western Norway.
Because the murder weapon was most likely a baseball bat. They’d found it under a pile of junk in Lenny Diver’s car, wrapped up in a blanket. When they showed it to Diver, he said he’d never seen the bat before. Somebody must have planted it there. He pointed triumphantly at some initials that had been carved into the shaft a long time ago. They were not Lenny’s initials. But it was later confirmed that his fingerprints were all over the bat. Nyland felt reasonably sure that closer analysis would reveal traces of blood from Georg Lofthus. And once they had both Diver’s fingerprints and Lofthus’s blood on the same baseball bat, Diver could say good-bye to Lake Superior for good.
The Land of Dreams (Minnesota Trilogy) Page 26